Wandering the Docks at just past midnight, an entirely inappropriate thought springs to mind: how long does it take to find a crime in a city with roughly the eighth-highest concentration of villainous parahumans in the states?
The thing is, even in Brockton Bay, crime isn't all that common. Sure, we've got a higher homicide rate than ninety percent of the country, but you're still more likely to get hit by a car than run into an E88'r out for blood. I can't expect to run into criminals with any regularity on a random patrol, even if I'm specifically looking for trouble. Nor should I want that. If wandering the streets automatically led to an encounter with a crime-in-progress, the city would be condemned.
I understand that my inability to exercise violence is a good thing. That doesn't keep the rage at bay, though. At this point I'm almost ready to seek out a Nazi bar and ask for directions to the closest pit fight.
Maybe this was a bad time. I didn't go out on Friday night, since I didn't have a route planned and couldn't have disappeared without Dad noticing. So instead I cooked dinner and sat down to eat with him. Half an hour of forced small talk, mixed with silent wondering at this man who is my father. Responsible for my stick-thin figure and owlish eyes.
I feel a spike of guilt for bashing Dad, and I try to turn it around. I got my height from him, too. Maybe my powers, now that I think about it. There's a correlation in families, like with New Wave. One theory is as good as any other when none have support, right?
I also went out on Saturday night and found nothing. A good sign for the population, but a terrible thing for my urge to ram a spike of bone into someone and rip and tear until-
In. Out. Breathe. I idly flex the visor of my helm, reveling in the sharpening feeling that accompanies the almost-pain. Mask on, Rose. Mask on.
I catch sight of a group of teenagers walking down the street, dressed up in greens and reds. I duck into a nearby alleyway and take a look at their faces. Asian, in red and green, in the middle of the night? In Brockton Bay, marking them as ABB members isn't profiling, it's a survival instinct. Another part of that survival instinct is running away, which I quash as I fall in step behind them. Maybe they're coming back from a successful crime. Maybe they're just hanging out. But maybe, just maybe, I can find something cathartic to do.
It takes a few minutes for them to join up with a larger group just outside a large two-story building, and it was at that point that I began to regret looking for trouble. Twenty or thirty gang members, all looking ready to start a fight. I stay inside an alleyway, wishing I could change the color of my bones into something less conspicuous. Could I fight them all? Maybe, depending on how many guns they had. I had tested my armor by dropping increasing large pieces of metal on them, but I had no idea how that translated into number of bullets I could block. What if they swarmed me? I could stab the gangsters, yeah, but I didn't want to kill them. Just send them to the police with a few injuries.
My thinking gets interrupted when I see a six-foot plus Asian man in a metallic dragon mask walk out the building. Lung, perhaps the single most individually dangerous parahuman in Brockton Bay. He started talking to the crowd and though I could hear him clearly, I was too busy considering my chances against him to listen. A pyrokinetic brute that got stronger the longer he fought. A villain that had taken on entire teams of heroes at once and left victorious. Way out of my weight class. I suddenly wish my hands weren't covered in plates of bone. That way I could wipe the clammy sweat off.
The rage would have to wait for another day. I turn on my heel to leave.
"-the children, just shoot. Doesn't matter your aim, just shoot. You see one lying on the ground? Shoot the little bitch twice to be sure. We give them no chance to be clever or lucky, understand?"
I take one full second to think if there is any world where I can leave Lung to do what he said and for it to be the reasonable, moral thing to do. Then I take another second to ask if it is likely that I am misinterpreting him.
I turn on my heel again and stride out of the alley and into the street. Lung takes all of a second to turn and face me. Odd, I don't think bone on concrete is that loud. Something to check.
"Who are you?" he asks disdainfully, rolling his shoulders and looking me up and down. I remain silent and keep walking. I'm almost within jumping distance, if I can get closer maybe I can put him down before anything-
Lung gestures and my world is fire.
The pain of having bare bone exposed to flame is indescribable. The worst parts of putting a hand on a stove and breaking a rib, except so much more. I scream, falling to my knees. God, why does it hurt so much? I drop the burned plates with another hiss of pain and regrow them. Loud, flat claps, accompanied by the more familiar pain of plates of bone shattering and chipping individually as I shudder from each one. Fuck, guns! I was shot! Multiple times! From the corner of my goggles I catch sight of an over-eager gang banger approaching with a nail-studded bat, leering. I whip my arm forward while pushing out a needle of bone from my hand. A line of red is blossoms across his face and the teen hisses in pain and stumbles backwards, swearing.
The claps have stopped and Lung is striding forward with something that looks close to amusement in his eyes. I steel myself a little. Push through. Mask is on. In. Out. Lung doesn't matter, have to take down the regular gang members. Can't have them shooting kids. I get up and start walking again. When Lung gets in close and tries to pulp my head with a fist, I duck under and spin past him, pushing myself via my shell, extending and retracting the bone around my body. It took a month to learn how to keep my balance while moving under my power, and longer for it to be faster than walking. Once I'm behind the dragon, I flick out a blade of bone to cut the muscles on the back of his legs and move on. Lung finds it remarkably difficult to stand without his Achilles tendon. Not sure how long it'll take for him to heal that. A different 'banger charges, a black-haired girl no older than I am. Go easy then. I lash out with a bone club at her jaw and get an unfortunate crunch for my troubles. She falls to the alley floor and I resolve to lower the amount of force I'm going to use on the rest of the gang.
Something ugly grabs my stomach when I see her scamper away. In the low light, I could almost mistake her for a sister.
The rest of the group is backing up. Why? My world is fire again and I barely manage to keep down a scream. Ah. Right. Dragon-man. Right behind me but still capable of throwing fire. He can wait. Ah ha ha ha, Lung can wait. I push down the pain and hysteria and charge the normals, forming a pair of big, showy blades in either hand. They run. Good.
I turn around and catch a fist to my face. Silly me, I thought I was scary. They were running from Lung, the dragon man that wants me dead. The bone lattice in my mask collapses, folding like a car fender to lessen the impact. Then the bone plate behind it flexes, almost breaking. Every broken spindle is suffering, but I'm alive.
Then Lung raises his hand and once again my world is fire. This time I send out needles from my back as I stagger, hoping to find flesh.
I slip, feeling concrete impact my back. There's a roar of rage, almost not human. I struggle to my feet and watch Lung pulls spines from his chest with slick, sucking noises. He's definitely taller now too, and I see some scales peeking over his skin.
"Kill you, motherfucker," he manages, mask falling to the ground. "Leave you in pieces."
I run out of the street and back into the alley. Maybe I can lose the dragon man and not get burned. I stifle a noise, not sure if it was a laugh or a scream. On the one hand, some goddamn wish fulfillment! Finally! On the other hand, I'm in a fight with Lung! Fuck!
There's a whoosh, and I take a look over my shoulder in time to see Lung charging after me, fire illuminating the cramped alley. Fuck. Too close to run. I turn fully to face him and press bone pillars out from my boots, turning a retreat into a charge of my own. I slip beneath his outstretched arms, project a bone spike from my chestplate to stop his knee (a joint the size of my head), and slam a lance of bone through his stomach, angling up to get at the squishy organs. I have the momentum, and we're both flying back out into the street, tearing at one another. The pain is manageable when measured against the missing chunks of flesh from Lung.
Then the other knee comes around and crunches into my side. Agony. We break apart and I skid across the ground, using bone protrusions to turn it into a roll, then to standing. No good route away yet, and he's getting bigger. Lung pushes a hand towards me and a wave of fire answers, head height or more, completely obscuring my vision. I extend my own hands and form a wall of bone, snapping off my connection once it's twice as wide as my outstretched arms. The fracture hurts, but it's barely registers as a twinge compared to having my shell set alight. Then I step the side and wait. Come on, take the bait you overgrown lizard. Do it do it do it do it do it.
Lung crashes through, sending chunks of bone everywhere, already reaching for where I was. I slam a lance into his side, the shaft splintering a little as it slips through the barely-there gaps in his armor. I hiss at the feeling of ripped fingernail and torn scabs from when the lance scrapes against the edge of his scales. Huh, he's nearly covered now. That means I won't be able to hurt him for much longer.
Then I form spikes inside him and spin them around, pureeing his organs. He tries to roar, but it comes out as a pained gasp. It doesn't stop him from backhanding me, and I roll with it, feeling only stings where bone plates scrape against asphalt, not shatter. It can't be a tenth of what he feels. Maybe I can run now.
By the time I'm back up Lung's torn the lance from his stomach, leaving gore on the ground. Hm, there's a lot of that around, isn't there? And he seems no worse for wear. Ah ha ha ha, he's no-selling enough trauma to kill people. Also, that did not incapacitate him for as long as I had hoped it would. He's even taller now, at least ten feet. He bends over, a pair of protrusions emerging from his back. Maybe he does grow wings. I probably won't be able to run if that happens. When he gets back up to standing, he's closer to twelve feet. He looks at me, mouth more feline than human, with something in between rage and caution in his eyes.
Caution?
He charges, wreathing himself in a corona of flames, blue-white and hot enough to feel through armor. Every step tears up a chunk of pavement, until he leaps no less than two stories and aims for me. Perfect.
I brace against the ground and make a pillar of bone, pointed and sharp. Lung tries, but he can't alter his flight enough to avoid it. He howls when his own weight impales him, and the sound of it soothes away the moment of blinding white misery from when the dragon's weight is too much and the pike shatters.
I roll away before he can crush me and scramble to my feet, reorienting myself. Then I take a moment to really look at Lung. He stands far more than head and shoulders above me now, mouth splitting into four separate jaws, every inch of skin covered with metallic scales. He bellows, shaking the few unshattered windows in their frames, a silver juggernaut illuminated by fire and a single unbroken street lamp.
I laugh at him with that shaky, warbling laugh that the really crazy people have. It's probably too late to run. Maybe I'll die. But goddamn if this isn't more fun than Current Affairs.
Then something fast, blue and silver slams into Lung's knee from behind and he staggers. An opening. I push forward, projecting and retracting bone pillars to gain height and speed, enough total velocity that the trash-can sized club I slam into his howling mouth breaks teeth. There's a clap, louder than any of the gang members', and Lung falls to his knees. Something like the sound of a sledge hammer against a bag of nickles only so much more so happens just behind him and I get thrown free, using my bones to cut the air and guide my fall.
Strange. Don't remember practicing that.
When I roll back to my feet, I see a man in silver and blue power armor dancing around Lung's feet, swinging a polearm with a glowing blade, leaving charred gouges where it meets metallic scale. Another man launches lighting, flitting between blasts of flame in flickers of light. Every so often Lung staggers from an invisible force, and the clap of gunfire comes in close behind. I see a glowing figure smacking a red one in intervals. Then the red figure becomes a blur, there's another nickels and sledgehammers sound and Lung's chest caves in, the man in red retreating to the glowing figure.
The Protectorate. I feel a little hope. Then I quash it. Mask. Back to the fight. Running now wouldn't be the heroic thing to do.
I dash in, retracting and projecting bone to lengthen and quicken my steps, adding extensions modeled after a sprinter's prosthetics. A thunderbolt screams, and a blackened patch of scales falls off Lung. I jump, dead in the air for a split second, and slide a spear of bone into his chest, already growing spikes in the cavity, looking for something to slice. I get a swipe of an arm larger than some motorcycles for my troubles, and manage to avoid pancaking into the pavement by judicious application of long, bendy columns of bone that take the force, then snap. Pain. Once I'm on the ground again, I take a moment to process it.
"Who are you?"
I spin around and form a pair of bone needles from my wrists. Red bodysuit, with black racing stripes meeting into a 'V' on the chest. Velocity, the local speedster. I manage to not react with extraordinary violence.
He raises his hands in a placating gesture. "Just looking for an answer."
I nod and open my mouth, ready to answer, when a roar punctuates the background. His hands drop and he yells "RUN!" before disappearing in a red blur. I take his advice, juking left just in time to be roasted rather than crushed. More pain. Shed the armor, push off the ground, run. Can't take him on my own, and he's never been captured in a straight fight, no matter how many parahumans are against him. Maybe retreat is the heroic thing here.
I flee, dodging blasts of flame and feet large enough to crush dumpsters. In between moments of panic, I catch sight of the heroes of the city at work. Armsmaster, all whirling blades and precision. Assault, a red blur that infrequently hits Lung with the force of his partner Battery's punches. The ever present staggers and twitches from Lung, work of Dauntless from up high and Miss Militia from who knows how far away. With the Protectorate running interference, I manage to run fast enough to stay alive. There's a red blur, and something's taped to my mask. Can't see it, but there's a beeping noise and suddenly someone's talking.
"Unidentified parahuman, are you willing to help combat Lung?" A gruff voice, coming from what's probably a radio, one that reminds me of the less sociable Dock workers Dad sometimes put up at our house when things got bad.
I'm too out of breath to do anything other than nod and hope that it goes through. Maybe who ever built the thing added a motion tracking function? Fuck, running for your life is tiring. I corner, extend a hooked pole to catch a light post, and swing to the side, keeping as much momentum as possible as I take a moment to look back. Lung tries to follow, tries being the operative word. He has too much mass and stumbles, giving a red blur enough time to catch him. Not Velocity, given the sledge hammer and nickels sound as Lung's knee explodes. Assault moves back as Lung starts struggling to his feet, flesh already moving back over the bone. Bone.
I reach out and pull. His kneecap bends to my will, inverting and forming a rose head out of habit. Lung roars in pain and I feel something resisting my power, trying to pull the bones back into place. I flex my power once more and snap the bone along the petals before rounding another corner, eager to get away.
Huh. No pain when breaking other people's bones. Good to know. Back to running.
A red blur with black streaks pulls up beside me and starts talking. "Were the bones you?"
I nod. In. Out. Keep running.
"What are your limits?" he presses, voice coming out distorted and strange. I shrug, holding up my index finger.
"First time you-" the rest is cut off when a shadow appears over both of us and we split off, clearing the street as the now nearly-winged dragon man to crash down between us.
An incoherent roar shakes me to my bones and another wave of fire rolls over me. Agony. I fall to a knee and look up. And up. And up. Lung looms, easily fourteen feet tall, inhuman and surrounded by flame.
I freeze up as I realize I'm about to die. I'm going to become a statistic. Just another independent hero, dead in the streets, used to convince kids to join the Wards.
Then there's another sledgehammer and nickels sound and one of his legs explodes mid-thigh. He roars, falling down and instinctively putting out a hand to catch himself, eyes filled with surprise. Eyes.
I launch myself up, aiming for his face. A burst of flame nearly ashes my armor to the skin. Nearly. One needle of bone up his nose, one into his brain. Puncture and branch. When resistance is encountered, spread and scrape. Like rubbing a compound fracture against a cheesegrater. I scream. One spike finds an opening, and I follow it. Lung starts jerking. His brain. I form more spikes and start twitching them around, searching for something, anything critical.
He's got to have limits, right?
Claws scrapes my back plate. I stop trying to be fancy and simply shove as much bone as possible into his brain. Something hot and sharp and oh fuck I can feel his claws in my spine and why can't I feel my legs?
Then the claws stop wriggling and the fires stop growing. Someone starts talking and I black out.
